Like most serious runners I know, I've become a bit of a running historian/scholar of my sport over the years, having read time and time again the works of Hill, Foster, Moorcroft, De Castella, Shorter et al.
The great thing about these books, despite being impossible to put down even on the eighth time of reading, is that you can relate so much to the challenges, problems, injury, successes of the subjects, because every week in training you're bound to experience similar time and again.
In the pages of Ron Hill you can read of the awesome runs over the marathon in 1970, and then the over-training for Fukuoka 1971 and the battle to keep his head going into the Munich Olympics in 1972, where the reader senses the weight of the occasion playing on Ron's mental well being.
Good books have been scarce in recent years but in 2009 Charlie Spedding self published his autobiography, and it is a gem.
This week I read it for the third time, because it isn't the longest book ever, but everything in there is absorbing and relevant. At a point in his career Spedding confronts himself with a series of questions to discover just what he wanted from the sport and how much he wanted it.
Clearly an extremely intelligent man, Spedding was able to change his entire thought process and even vocabulary so that he could view his achievements in a different context. Descriptive words like 'hard' - which suggests one can push harder still, were replaced with 'perfect' - because a perfect session of reps for example, cannot be more perfect than 'perfect'.
I won't spoil the book if you haven't read it (and I suggest you should) but it leads Charlie to excel in the races that really mean something to him, and most notably these were the London Marathon of 1984 (Olympic selection race for Charlie) and the Olympics of 1984 where despite the quality of the field, he claimed bronze by taking the race by the scruff of the neck and earning himself a medal.
Reading this was extremely inspiring and made me question how I view my own running.
With London less than six weeks away I have now managed to string together four consecutive weeks at an average of over 100 miles per week and I feel extremely good operating at this volume.
Previously when I've gone up to 100 miles a week I start to feel weak and it seems that, rather than making me stronger it's breaking me down. I don't feel like that this time, I did slightly over 108 last week and within that were some very 'perfect' runs as far as I am concerned. It was an extremely enjoyable weeks training and one I felt is leading me very much in the right direction for an attempt at my marathon pb on April 17th.
M - 11.5 miles easy (11.5)
T - am 6.4 miles in 41 mins, pm [5.5 miles warming up/down] 8 x 870m 'Russell Park' reps off 1 min recovery - consistent and up with my best round this park in 10 years of doing these efforts - 2:36, 2:35, 2:35. 2:35, 2:35, 2:35, 2:35, 2:34 - equivalent of 2:58 for 1km (16.5)
W - am 6.4 miles easy, pm 6.4 miles steady (12.8)
T - am 5.1 miles easy, pm 10 miles brisk and finishing strongly at <5:25 pace (15.1)
F - am 6.4 miles easy, pm 8.3 miles steady at 6:10 pace which felt extremely easy (14.7)
S - am 8.9 miles inc 10 x 1 min/1min fartlek. Very enjoyable, pm 5.3 miles easy after Arsenal game (14.2)
S - 24.25 miles with Matt Janes at 6:45 pace - felt good (24.25)
108.5 miles for the week